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REPUTATION didn’t need a sprawling city or a sprawling runtime to make an impact. Set in a small Lancashire town still scarred by tragedy and soaked in tension, Martin Law’s 83-minute feature debut delivers a brutal yet empathetic look at male identity, loyalty, and the illusion of escape. For all the familiar elements—drug deals, toxic friendships, and spiraling violence—there’s a freshness here rooted in direction, confident performances, and a deep understanding of working-class lives.

In ANNO UNO, the screen isn’t filled with conflict in the traditional sense. There are no giant battles, no conspiracies, and not even much tension—at least not of the cinematic kind. Instead, Roberto Rossellini presents us with a series of meticulously staged conversations that feel less like drama and more like a historical transcript. It’s deliberate, dry, and at times difficult to stay engaged with, but beneath that lies a quiet, deeply reflective portrait of a nation learning how to lead itself.

There’s no anchor in FINIS TERRAE—not in plot, nor pacing. And that’s the point. Jean Epstein’s 1929 maritime drama refuses the comforts of traditional storytelling, choosing instead to let its visuals breathe like the salt-soaked winds off Brittany’s coast. Nearly a century after its release, this newly restored version—presented by Eureka Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema series—feels more like an elemental experience than a narrative one. Less concerned with dialogue (silent, of course) or structure, Epstein’s film locks us into a stark and immersive meditation on survival, isolation, and the subtle violence of suspicion.

Clocking in at just twelve minutes, WE ARE KINGS manages to articulate more about family, assimilation, and adolescent longing than some features do in ninety. Frank Sun’s quiet yet emotionally layered short unfolds mostly in a Chinese restaurant — and builds its world entirely through character behavior, cultural nuance, and a grounded sense of environment.

There’s no hero in MONEY TALK$, but there are so many stories — each bruised, each urgent, each tethered by a single hundred-dollar bill making its way through the desperate, messy arteries of 1981 New York City. In just 33 minutes, director Tony Mucci manages to capture something potent and sprawling: not just a snapshot of a city on the brink, but a mosaic of human motives wrapped around a currency that both binds and betrays everyone who comes into contact with it.

There’s something eerily quiet about the apocalypse in THE FIN. Syeyoung Park’s second feature sidesteps the usual dystopian fiction in favor of something leaner, stranger, and far more introspective. It’s less concerned with world-ending spectacle and more focused on the quieter collapse — the slow erosion of individuality, compassion, and trust in the name of progress. In this post-war, unified Korea, an ecological disaster has already happened. All that’s left is the cleanup crew — and the exploited mutants called Omegas, who were never given a choice.

There’s a reassurance in the chaos of a slasher film that knows exactly what it wants to be. DIE’CED: RELOADED doesn’t try to be the definitive genre title—it simply leans into what works: blood, retro vibes, exaggerated villains, and a final girl worth rooting for. Set in 1987 Seattle but filtered through a fog of modern horror, this reimagined expansion of Jeremy Rudd’s viral short film DIE’CED plays like a lovingly demented mixtape of every scarecrow-stalking, asylum-escapee, neon-soaked nightmare that haunted the late VHS era.

Some horror films seek to get you through tension and jump scares. Others aim to disturb, to burrow under your skin and sit there. NO TEARS IN HELL does the latter—unflinchingly. Writer/director Michael Caissie’s dramatization of Russian serial killer Alexander Spesivtsev’s crimes is as brutal as it is cold. This isn’t a stylized slasher. It’s a grim, deliberately paced nightmare that swaps sensationalism for discomfort, inviting viewers into a world where evil isn’t theatrical—it’s mundane and methodical.

There’s an eccentric kind of courage in telling a story that isn’t easily explained. LEGEND OF THE HAPPY WORKER, the surrealist satire from veteran editor-turned-director Duwayne Dunham, embraces that ambiguity with open arms and dusty boots. Set in a self-contained utopia built from scratch in the Utah desert, this film is more about philosophy than plot, and more about tone than resolution. But that doesn’t mean it lacks clarity—it just refuses to spoon-feed meaning in a world that’s anything but straightforward.

Few titles in home video history have conjured up as much infamy as FACES OF DEATH. Released in 1978 and marketed as a shocking documentary that captures death in its rawest form, the film has earned notoriety less for its artistic merit and more for the myth surrounding it. Teenagers dared each other to watch it. Parents tried to ban it. And now, with a new Blu-ray Steelcase edition from Dark Sky Selects, the film returns for a generation raised on YouTube reaction videos and Reddit gore threads. Does it still hold power? That depends on your threshold—and your expectations.

Stillness isn’t absence in SILENT LIGHT. It’s intention. It’s discomfort. And in Carlos Reygadas’ deeply spiritual 2007 drama—now given a pristine 4K restoration—it becomes the language through which heartbreak, betrayal, and devotion are explored. This isn’t a film that rushes toward answers. Instead, it demands that you sit with the tension and listen to the silences between words, between glances, between sunrise and sunset.

Dressed in '80s nostalgia and soaked in blood, FRIENDS FOREVER is a horror short that understands exactly what it wants to be. It’s not trying to redefine the slasher genre, and it doesn’t need to. Instead, it leans into its world created in the film—a cursed party in a farmhouse—with confidence and just enough craft to deliver a memorable 20-minute experience.

The 2006 reimagining of both the film THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (and the novel by the same name) wastes no time getting to the chaos. Just ten minutes into this high-budget disaster film, a rogue wave upends the luxurious cruise liner, flipping it upside down and throwing its passengers into instant panic. From there, the film plunges into a nonstop scramble for survival—lean on setup, heavy on spectacle. I’m a sucker for disaster films, especially those from the golden era of the 1970s, and this remake leans into the chaos that made them work.

At a glance, MY MOTHER’S WEDDING seems like a guaranteed success. With Kristin Scott Thomas behind the camera and a powerhouse trio of Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, and Emily Beecham in the lead roles, expectations run high for a rich, emotionally layered family drama. But while the film occasionally brushes up against those ambitions, it never fully tackles them. This is a film that often gestures toward depth without quite getting there—warm on the surface, yet oddly hollow in the aftermath.